فصل 6

I continue to keep this journal, even though there is no need. A daily endeavor is difficult to break once it becomes engrained in who we are. Munira assures me that, come what may, she will find a way to slip this journal into the archive at the Library of Alexandria. That would be a first! A scythe who continues their dutiful journaling even after death.

We have been here at the Kwajalein Atoll for six weeks now, with no communication from the outside world. While I itch to hear news of Marie, and how she fared at the inquest on Endura, I cannot dwell on it. Either all went well, and she is presiding over MidMerica as High Blade… or it did not go her way, and our task becomes an even greater challenge.  All the more reason to unlock the secret of the atoll and access the wisdom of the founding scythes. Their contingency plan for the scythedom’s failure, whatever it is, could be the only thing that can save it.

Munira and I have taken up residence in the bunker we found. We’ve also constructed a rudimentary canoe that is small enough to evade the island’s security system. It can’t go any distance, of course, but we’ve been using it to paddle out to the nearer islands of the atoll. We’ve been finding much the same there as we found here, evidence of earlier habitation. Concrete slabs, fragments of foundations. Nothing extraordinary.

We have, however, learned the original purpose of the place—or at least how it was used toward the end of the mortal age. The entire Kwajalein Atoll was a military installation. Not for the actual waging of war, but as a proving ground for emergent technologies. While some of the other nearby atolls were blasted with tests of nuclear weaponry, this atoll was used for the testing of rockets—as well as for the launching of spy satellites—some of which might even still be in the Thunderhead’s observational satellite network.

It’s obvious now why the founding scythes chose this place; it was already protected by layers of secrecy. Thus, with a foundation of shadow already in place, it made it easier to erase from the world completely.

If only we could access everything in the bunker, we might learn how the founding scythes repurposed this place. Unfortunately, we can’t get beyond the uppermost level. The rest of the installation is behind a door with double gem-locks that require two scythes—one standing on either side of the door—to open.

As for the island’s defense system, we don’t know how to disable it, but being very literally under the radar makes it a moot point. The problem is, now that we are here—whether we find anything or not—we cannot leave.

—From the “postmortem” journal of Scythe Michael Faraday, May 14th, Year of the Raptor 6 Fate of the Lanikai Lady

Far from feeling trapped, Munira found being on the atoll freeing. For a person with a penchant for archives, the bunker provided endless fodder for her imagination. Endless information to be sorted, organized, and analyzed.

In one of the closets, to Munira’s amazement, they found a robe that had belonged to Scythe Da Vinci—one of the twelve founders. She had seen pictures of his robes, all slightly different, but each featuring drawings done by the original Leonardo da Vinci. This one had the Vitruvian Man spread across it. When the scythe opened his arms, so would the Vitruvian Man. It was, of course, nowhere near the condition of the pristine robes that were enshrined in Endura’s Museum of the Scythedom—but even so, it was priceless, and would be the pride and joy of any collection.

Their mornings consisted of fishing and gathering food. They’d even begun tilling and planting seeds to create a garden, just in case they were marooned there long enough to harvest. Some days they would paddle out to search the outlying islands of the atoll. Other days were spent studying the records they found in the bunker.

Faraday was less interested in the mortal-age records than he was trying to get through that steel door that had been locked by the founding scythes.

“If the Israebian scythedom had ordained me instead of denying me,” Munira quipped, “I could have opened those doors with you, because I’d have my own ring.” “If you had become a scythe, you wouldn’t even be here, because I would never have met you at the Alexandria Library,” Faraday pointed out. “No doubt you’d be out there gleaning like the rest of us, and trying to quell your troubled sleep. No, Munira, your purpose was not to be a scythe. It was to save the scythedom. With me.” “Without a second ring, we can’t make much progress, Your Honor.”

Faraday smiled and shook his head. “All this time, and it’s still ‘Your Honor.’ I’ve only heard you call me Michael once—and that was when you thought we were about to die.” Ah, thought Munira. He remembers that. She was both embarrassed and pleased.

“Familiarity might be… counterproductive,” she said.

His grin grew wider. “You think you’ll fall for me, you mean?”

“Maybe it’s the other way around, and I’m afraid you’ll be the one who falls for me.” Faraday sighed. “Well, now you’ve got me in a bind. If I say I won’t fall for you, then you’ll be insulted. But if I say I might, then we’re in an uncomfortable place.” She knew him well enough to know that he was just being playful. So was she.

“Say what you like—it won’t matter,” Munira told him. “I’m not attracted to older men. Even when they’ve turned a corner and set their age down, I can always tell.” “Well, then,” said Scythe Faraday, the grin never leaving his face. “Let’s agree that our relationship will remain as castaway co-conspirators on a noble quest for grand answers.” Munira found she could live with that, if he could.

It was on a morning toward the end of their sixth week that things took an unexpected turn.

Munira was in one of the wild patches that had once been a backyard, checking a tree for ripe fruit, when an alarm went off. It was the first time since they’d arrived that the island’s defensive system had come back to life. Munira dropped what she was doing and raced to the bunker. She found Faraday standing on the mound above it, peering through rusted binoculars toward the sea.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“See for yourself.” He handed her the binoculars

She adjusted the view and brought things into focus. It was clear now what had triggered the island into red alert. There were ships on the horizon. About a dozen of them.

“Unregistered vessel, please identify.”

It was the first communication the Nimbus flotilla had had since passing out of the Thunderhead’s sphere of influence the previous day. It was morning, and Director Hilliard was taking tea with Loriana. The director nearly dumped what was left of hers when the message came over the bridge loudspeaker amid a burst of awful static.

“Should I get some of the other agents?” Loriana asked.

“Yes,” said the director. “Get Qian and Solano. But skip Sykora—I could do without his negativity right now.” “Unregistered vessel, please identify.”

The director leaned toward the microphone on the communication console. “This is fishing vessel Lanikai Lady out of Honolulu, registration WDJ98584, currently under private charter.” The last thing that Loriana heard before the door closed behind her was the voice on the other end saying “Authorization unrecognized. Access denied.” Well, even with resistance from whoever it was, Loriana couldn’t help but feel that this was a positive development.

Munira and Faraday scrambled to do something—anything—that could take down the defense system. In all the weeks they’d been here, they had been unable to locate its control center—which probably meant it was behind the impenetrable steel door.

All this time, the silent titanium turret had stood nestled in the shrubs of the island’s highest point, like a chess piece forgotten in the corner of the board. It was just an inert object these past weeks, but now a panel had opened, and a heavy gun barrel protruded. It was easy to forget how deadly the thing was when it was nothing but an immobile, windowless tower—and a squat one at that, barely four meters high. Now it had awakened, and the air filled with a building electronic whine as it powered up.

The first blast came before they reached it, a white laser pulse that hit one of the ships on the horizon. Black smoke billowed silently in the distance.

Then the turret began to charge again.

“Maybe we can cut its power…,” suggested Munira as they reached it.

Faraday shook his head. “We don’t even know how it’s powered. Could be geothermal, could be nuclear. Whatever it is, it’s been viable for hundreds of years, which means shutting it down won’t be a simple matter.” “There are other ways to shut off a machine,” Munira said.

Twenty seconds after the first blast, the turret swiveled ever so slightly. Now the barrel pointed a few degrees to the left. It fired again. Another plume of dark smoke. Another delayed report from the sea.

There was an access ladder that ran up the back of the tower. Munira had climbed it several times over the past few weeks to get a better view of the islands of the atoll. Maybe now that its armored face was open and playing peekaboo with the incoming fleet, it could be disabled.

A third blast. Another direct hit. Another twenty seconds to recharge.

“We’ll wedge something in the neck of the turret!” Faraday suggested.

Munira began climbing the turret tower while, below, Faraday dug around at the base until he came up with a pointed stone and tossed it to her.

“Jam this in so it can’t swivel. Even if it only affects it a tenth of a degree, at this distance it will be enough for its shots to miss their mark.” But when Munira reached the turret, she found that it swiveled on a hairline that wouldn’t admit a grain of sand, much less a stone wedge. Munira felt a powerful surge of static as the gun fired again.

She climbed to the very top of the turret, hoping her weight might throw the mechanism off balance, but no such luck. Blast after blast, nothing she did made a difference. Faraday shouted suggestions, but none of them helped.

Finally, she climbed out onto the barrel itself, shimmying her way toward the muzzle, hoping that she could somehow wrestle it a few millimeters out of alignment.

Now the muzzle was just in front of her. She reached forward to grasp it, feeling its opening, smooth and clean as the day it was manufactured. It angered her. Why had humankind put its effort into defying corrosion and the ravages of time for a device of destruction? It was obscene that this thing still functioned.

“Munira! Watch out!”

She pulled her hand back from the muzzle just in time. She felt the blast in the marrow of her bones and in the roots of her teeth. The barrel to which she clung got hotter with the blast.

And then she had an idea. Perhaps this primitive war technology could be defeated with even more primitive sabotage.

“A coconut!” said Munira. “Throw me a coconut! No—throw me a bunch of them.” If there was anything that there was an abundance of on this island it was coconuts. The first one Faraday threw was too big to fit into the mouth of the muzzle.

“Smaller!” she told him. “Hurry.”

Faraday tossed up three smaller ones. His aim was perfect, and she caught all three, just as the cannon got off another blast. The horizon was now dotted with at least a dozen pillars of smoke.

Focusing, she began to count. She had twenty seconds. She shimmied out farther onto the barrel and pushed the first coconut into the muzzle. It slid down the smooth shaft a little too easily. The second one was harder to stuff in, though. Good! It needed to be. Finally, with the recharging whine hitting a crescendo, she rammed the last one down the gullet of the barrel, forcing it in. It was just large enough to plug it completely. Then, at the last second, she jumped.

This time there was no delay between explosion and sound. The ends of her hair singed. Shrapnel shredded the palm leaves around her. She hit the ground, and Faraday dove on top of her to protect her. Another explosion, along with heat that she thought would ignite their flesh… but then it faded, resolving into twangs of dying metal and the acrid smell of burning insulation. When they looked back, the turret was gone, and the tower was nothing but red-hot wreckage.

“Well done,” said Faraday. “Well done.”

But Munira knew they hadn’t been fast enough, and all they would find washing up on their shores would be the dead.

Loriana was in a stairwell when the blast came and ripped a hole in the ship, knocking her to the deck.

“May I have your attention, please…,” said the ship’s automated voice, with far less conviction than the moment called for. “Please make your way to the nearest safety pod and abandon ship at your earliest possible convenience. Thank you.” The ship began to keel to starboard as Loriana raced back up to the wheelhouse, hoping she’d be able to grasp the situation more clearly from up there.

Director Hilliard was standing before the navigation console. Shrapnel had shattered a window, and there was a cut on her forehead. She had a vague look about her, as if she were wandering the wheelhouse of a dream.

“Director Hilliard, we have to go!”

There was a second blast as another ship was hit. The vessel exploded midship, the bow and stern rising like a twig snapped in half.

Hilliard stared in stunned disbelief. “Was this the Thunderhead’s plan all along?” she muttered. “We’re useless to the world now. The Thunderhead couldn’t kill us, so did it sent us to a place where it knew we would be killed?” “The Thunderhead wouldn’t do that!” Loriana said.

“How do you know, Loriana? How do you know?”

She didn’t—but clearly the Thunderhead had no eyes on this place, which meant it didn’t know what to expect any more than they did.

Another blast. Another ship hit. Their own vessel was foundering, and it wouldn’t be long before the sea swallowed it.

“Come with me, Director,” said Loriana. “We have to get to the safety pods before it’s too late.” When Loriana arrived at the pods with Hilliard in tow, the main deck was flooding. Several pods had already ejected; others were too damaged to use. Agent Qian lay deadish and badly burned in the corner. Not deadish, but dead. There’d be no way to revive him out here.

There was one pod left, overstuffed with maybe a dozen agents who were unable to close the door because of a damaged hinge. It would have to be closed manually from the outside.

“Make room for the director!” Loriana said.

“There’s no room left,” someone inside shouted.

“Too bad.” Loriana shoved the director in, forcing her into the crush of bodies.

“Loriana—now you,” said Hilliard. But clearly there was no space left for her. Seawater was pooling around her ankles now. Before the pod could flood, Loriana grabbed the door and, struggling against the bent hinge, closed it. Then she waded to the manual-launch mechanism; slammed down the release button, which launched the pod into the sea; and then dove in after it.

It was hard to keep her head above surface so close to the sinking vessel, but she gasped what air she could and swam for all she was worth to put some distance between her and the dying vessel. Meanwhile, the pod’s engine kicked in, and it began to power its way to shore, leaving her behind.

The blasts from the island had stopped, but all around Loriana were burning ships in various stages of death. There were more agents in the water screaming for help. And bodies. So many bodies.

Loriana was a strong swimmer, but the shore was so far away. And what if there were sharks? Was she destined to go the way of the Grandslayers?

No, she couldn’t think about that now. She had managed to save the director. Now she had to put all her attention into saving herself. She had been a distance swimmer on the Nimbus Academy’s swim team, although she was not in the shape she had been in a year ago. Distance swimming, she knew, was about pacing yourself so that you had enough energy to finish the race. So she began a slow and measured crawl toward shore. Loriana resolved not to stop until she either reached the island or drowned.